If Mike Huckabee gets the Republican nomination for President of the United States, evangelicals lose. America loses with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton when either beat Huckabee, but evangelical American Christians lose more. Even if Huckabee won the election, he would be another Jimmy Carter in office – and, again, evangelical American Christians would lose the most. Evangelicals, especially southerners, and conservatives of every stripe must stop Huckabee now. Why am I, an evangelical and a southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, saying this about a former Southern Baptist preacher?

Because the politics of identity lose to the politics of great ideas.

American pluralism is united with transcendent, ascendant, dynamic, optimistic, ideas that work, succeed, and triumph for the American people. Identity politics, which may work regionally, fail nationally because there is no unifying identity with a strong majority – other than the simple but magnificent identity of ‘American.’ A Christian identity candidate can’t win on that identity alone, especially when the Democrat candidates will profess Christianity with equal fervor.

To the point, and the person of Huckabee, he will do damage to the Great Experiment, our democracy in America, because he isn’t a consistent, conscientious, committed conservative. He is a big government, Nanny State, tax and spend politician – who supports amnesty for illegal immigrants. Huckabee could be right, sometimes, for social conservatives. But, he is wrong and weak as a defense conservative. He fundamentally doesn’t understand the nature of the world war we are fighting or the global context of international affairs. If he governs like he did as governor in Arkansas, he is not a fiscal conservative. All good reasons not to make Huckabee the Republican standard bearer.

Evangelicals need to be concerned about the damage he will do to the Great Commission. If Huckabee is the "Christian candidate" then everything that goes wrong, every foible or failure of his, and every unimaginable consequence that befalls the U.S. during his presidency will be attributed by the nominally Christian, culturally Christian, Liberal Left Christian, non-and anti-Christian Americans (about 55% of the U.S.) to Christianity. That won’t help evangelicals build the Christian witness and discipleship of the nominally Christian or convert by faith the culturally Christian. It’ll hurt evangelicals when they engage the liberal “sissy” Christians and anti-Christians in the American culture war.

Politics is about compromise. Christian faith is about purity. Politics allows accommodations and exceptions, especially in foreign affairs, to defend the Nation. Christianity can’t divert from the truth, the light, the way of Jesus. Yet, a Christian President Mike Huckabee will be just a man bewildered on the world stage – when he must make compromises and take actions that many will not call ‘Christian’. That is if Huckabee got elected.

Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and David Huckabee sought office as southerners and Southern Baptists. The media mocked Carter's comments about “lusting in his heart” but, otherwise promoted him as their liberal in Christian clothing. The media ignored Clinton and Gore’s religious denomination because they knew that it was a fig leaf. The media will pounce on Huckabee as a Southern Baptist. That would be fine, if Huckabee had the intellect and courage of the Apostle Paul or Martin Luther to defend his faith in a ringing exposition of the Gospel. More likely, Huckabee will equivocate and abdicate. The Good News and great Christian faith denomination will be dragged down, not uplifted.

America has a destiny. It takes a social, defense and fiscal conservative to lead the nation to that “Munificent Destiny”. None of the Republican Presidential candidates are flawless as Conservatives. One, Fred Thompson, is more, and better, as a Conservative dedicated to the federalism of our Constitution. Ron Paul talks the game, but his isolationism and fantasy politics on taxation, define him as a fringe as Ross Perot. Huckabee can’t be trusted as a conservative.

Huckabee is dangerously wrong on the global warming hoax that humans are at fault. He is equally clueless on how to deal with Islamists who will kill us all and Islamic countries which naturally produce the Islamists. Huckabee’s courting amnesty for illegal aliens threatens American sovereignty and our rule of law.

What are the three reasons to elect Mike Huckabee? Because he is an cvangelical Christian x 3? Not good enough. Better to have an evangelical Christian run with three big conservative ideas to win – for America. Failing that, have an informed Christian run for President with three big conservative issues.

South Carolina, my cousins (literally), do your duty.

James Atticus Bowden is a military ‘futurist'.See his novel, Rosetta 6.2, www.rosettasixpointtwo.com. Contact him through his website, www.americancivilization.net, and blog, Deo Vindice. A retired United States Army Infantry Officer, he is a 1972 graduate of the United States Military Academy.He earned graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University.He a Republican Congressional District Chairman in Virginia.